Trajectory - Global Systems & Strategic Futures

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Latest — 14 Dec 2025

The Arsenal Paradox

The next global conflict will be decided not by battlefield technology but by industrial architecture—the ability to produce weapons at scale while economies continue functioning. The United States is losing this race before the shooting starts.

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The Temple and the Trap

A leaked phone call, a disputed cliff-top temple, and two nations' domestic politics collided in 2025 to produce Southeast Asia's bloodiest conflict in decades. The Thailand-Cambodia crisis reveals how ancient grievances become modern catastrophes—and why neither side can afford to stop fighting.

The Lights in the Sky Are Not What You Think

For seventy-seven years, governments have investigated unidentified aerial phenomena with billions of dollars and thousands of personnel. The findings point not toward alien visitors but toward something more unsettling: the systematic limits of human perception, institutional knowledge, and our...

The Pipeline and the Sword

Russia's weaponisation of energy exports has transformed NATO's strategic calculus more profoundly than any military build-up since 1991. The alliance now faces a contest where molecules matter as much as missiles—and where Europe's thirty-year bet on interdependence has become its most...

The Glacier's Verdict

At 4,500 metres in the Depsang Plains, sovereignty dissolves with the permafrost. Chinese and Indian soldiers patrol terrain that is literally disappearing beneath their boots—glaciers retreating, watersheds shifting, the physical geography that once defined borders melting into cartographic...

The Reef That Decides Everything

The rusting hull of the Sierra Madre sits on Second Thomas Shoal, a Philippine Navy vessel deliberately grounded in 1999 to stake a territorial claim. A handful of marines live aboard, resupplied by small boats that must run a gauntlet of Chinese Coast Guard water cannons.

The Sanction That Couldn't Bite

Russia was supposed to collapse by now. When Western nations imposed what officials called "unprecedented" economic sanctions in February 2022, the predictions were stark: GDP would crater 15%, the ruble would become rubble, Putin's war machine would grind to a halt within months.

The Ice Beneath the Peace

Antarctica's greatest asset is its legal fiction. For sixty-five years, the Antarctic Treaty System has performed an extraordinary conjuring trick: seven nations claim sovereignty over the continent, two superpowers reserve the right to claim, and everyone pretends that freezing these positions...

The Countdown That Isn't

Taiwan exists in a state of permanent almost. Almost a country. Almost at war. Almost reunified. For seventy-five years, the island has occupied a liminal space that international law cannot classify and strategic planners cannot resolve.